112
AI & Technical Product
12 min read
Understanding Data Platforms for Non-Technical PMs
Turn a product promise into clear data requirements across collection, contracts, quality, freshness, ownership, privacy, serving, and failure recovery.
The journal
Product notes for people who build.
Practical essays on product strategy, discovery, development, technology, and the work of turning ideas into useful products.
111
Discovery & Validation
13 min read
Qualitative Product Research: Make Claims the Evidence Can Carry
Turn qualitative product research into bounded, challengeable claims by tracing decisions through sampling, analysis, counterevidence, and limits.
110
AI & Technical Product
10 min read
ML Deployment: The Product Manager's Release Contract
Define the workflow, data, serving, monitoring, and recovery conditions an ML system must satisfy before users depend on its predictions.
109
Product Strategy
11 min read
Go-to-Market Strategy: Design the Path to Adoption
Build a coherent go-to-market system across segment, promise, route, adoption, commercial model, operating readiness, and evidence—not a launch-day checklist.
108
Product Strategy
12 min read
Strategic Roadmapping: Govern the Bets Between Teams
Build a strategic roadmap for coupled product bets: expose shared capability, dependencies, commitment states, decision rights, and change consequences.
107
Design & Delivery
12 min read
Sprint Execution: Protect the Goal, Manage the Flow
Run a sprint as a goal-protection and flow system: negotiate scope, expose ageing work, handle interruptions, preserve quality, and inspect outcomes.
106
Design & Delivery
11 min read
Agile Estimation: Name the Decision Before You Estimate
Choose decomposition, reference-class forecasting, or a bounded investigation by the decision an estimate must support and the uncertainty it can reduce.
105
Design & Delivery
11 min read
Design Tokens as a Versioned Product Interface
Build design tokens as a governed contract: model roles and contexts, generate platform outputs, protect compatibility, and expose adoption exceptions.
104
Product Strategy
12 min read
Fundraising Strategy: Decide What Capital Must Buy
Decide whether to raise, connect capital to decision-relevant milestones, model runway honestly, and examine dilution and governance before accepting terms.
103
Design & Delivery
10 min read
How I Shipped Chroni with OpenSaaS—and Where AI Hurt
A product manager's account of building an emergency-preparedness SaaS: stack choices, specification work, content modelling, AI debt, and deployment.
102
Product Strategy
11 min read
Market Segmentation: Build Groups That Change the Strategy
Build market segments around meaningful differences, test whether they are identifiable and useful, then translate them into product and go-to-market choices.
101
Design & Delivery
11 min read
Backlog Refinement: Govern Uncertainty Before Commitment
Refine product backlog items by exposing the uncertainty that matters, choosing the next evidence, and preserving what the team still does not know.
100
Leadership & Organisation
10 min read
Constructive Feedback: Design the Next Observable Move
Give feedback that names the evidence, protects task focus, invites missing context, and ends with a change both people can observe and review.
099
Leadership & Organisation
10 min read
Retrospective Formats: Choose a Lens, Then Close the Loop
Choose a retrospective format from the question the team must answer, then turn evidence into one owned change with a review condition.
098
Product Strategy
10 min read
Strategic Bets: Commit in Stages Without Hiding the Risk
Turn an uncertain strategic move into staged commitments with a causal thesis, bounded exposure, evidence checkpoints, and explicit stop or scale decisions.
097
Product Strategy
11 min read
Product Vision: Define the Future Without Pretending to Predict It
Build a product vision as a bounded, evidence-aware future state that clarifies strategic choices, exclusions, assumptions, and the conditions for revision.
096
Leadership & Organisation
12 min read
Executive Alignment: Make Disagreement Operable
Executive alignment is a decision system: expose assumptions, assign authority, record dissent, secure commitments, and define when the call reopens.
095
Design & Delivery
11 min read
Product Lifecycle Decisions: Diagnose the Trajectory Before Choosing the Strategy
Read a product’s trajectory across demand, value, economics, operations, and strategic relevance, then choose whether to invest, adapt, harvest, or retire.
094
Measurement & Growth
10 min read
Engagement Analytics: Measure Evidence of Value, Not Motion
Build an engagement model that connects observable behaviour to a product’s value, population, cadence, cohorts, counter-signals, and next decisions.
093
Design & Delivery
10 min read
Visual Hierarchy: Make Product Priority Visible
Design visual hierarchy from user goals, consequences, and state; preserve meaning across semantics, responsive layouts, dynamic content, and product change.
092
Product Strategy
13 min read
Product OKRs: Build a Decision Contract, Not a Scorecard
Design product OKRs around causal assumptions, team influence, guardrails, evidence, and reopening rules—so goals change decisions instead of just scoring work.
091
Design & Delivery
9 min read
Design Critiques: Test the Decision, Not the Designer
Run design critiques around a decision, its evidence, and its risks without turning feedback into taste voting or designer evaluation.
090
Design & Delivery
11 min read
Usability Studies: Test a Use Risk, Not the Interface
Design usability studies around specified users, goals, contexts, and release decisions—then turn observed breakdowns into bounded findings and action.
089
Product Strategy
12 min read
Early-Stage Startup Challenges: Diagnose Before You Act
Diagnose which early-stage constraint can invalidate the next decision, separate known risk from uncertainty, and choose a proportional response.